MERRILL - The city's taxpayers footed a legal bill of more than $6,000 to investigate the removal of old wooden doors and tables from a fairgrounds building.

The Merrill City Council approved the investigation in August at the urging of residents concerned about the value of the property given away by City Administrator Dave Johnson. Council members didn't set a price limit on the probe and specified that they wanted it handled by law firm Ruder Ware of Wausau.

The controversy started last summer when Johnson gave a friend of Fire Chief Dave Savone permission to cull old wooden furnishings from the Schultz Building on the former Lincoln County Fairgrounds.

Residents spotted the man filling a trailer with old doors and tables they viewed as potentially valuable antiques. When the word got out, Lincoln County officials came forward to say the furniture belonged to the county and should be returned.

Merrill bought the fairgrounds from the county last year and demolished the Schultz Building after the Lincoln County Fair to make room for a new expo hall, which is under construction. Johnson has said he believed the old furniture wasn't valuable and would be destroyed when the building came down.

When the investigation wrapped up in September, Merrill Mayor Bill Bialecki released a statement saying Johnson and Savone acted inappropriately but did not break any rules.

Since then USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin obtained a copy of the investigation and the Ruder Ware bill for conducting it.

Ruder Ware's six-page report on the investigation includes an analysis of city ordinances, which allow the city administrator to get rid of $1,000 in surplus city property so long as the City Council determines its surplus. The report also includes a timeline of events, including discussions about transferring items left in the Schultz Building before it changed hands from the county to the city in 2015.

All items taken by the fire chief's friend belonged to the county and not the city, according to the report. Those items were all returned to the county in mid-August.

"Lincoln County has indicated that they do not intend to take any further action in regards to this matter," states the report. "While it may have been inappropriate for Johnson to permit Savone and his friend to take property owned by Lincoln County out of a city-owned building, the ordinance was not violated in the removal of certain items from the Schultz Building by Savone and his friend."

The investigation wrapped up in late September and took nearly 32 hours of work by Ruder Ware attorneys. The hourly wage was between $200 and $295.

The Merrill probe was among a series of investigations of government officials in the region this year, all of which cost thousands of dollars.

Marathon County spent about $43,000 on an investigation into County Administrator Brad Karger during the summer after he participated in a controversial demonstration. Officials initially planned to spend a quarter of that much on the outside investigation.

The city of Wausau paid about $24,000 for an outside attorney to investigate the city's own investigation of former City Council member Keene Winters. The attorney concluded the city acted inappropriately.